"Death Ship" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, based on a 1953 short story with the same title by Richard Matheson.

These will be brought back to overpopulated Earth, where technicians will evaluate them, and if everything is satisfactory, stamp their findings with the word 'inhabitable' and open up yet another planet for colonization.

Three men who in a matter of minutes will be plunged into the darkest nightmare reaches of the Twilight Zone.The Space Cruiser E-89, crewed by Captain Paul Ross, Lt. Ted Mason, and Lt. Mike Carter, is on a mission to analyze new worlds and discover if they are suitable for colonization.

Mason and Carter fiercely object to this plan, especially once they find that atmospheric interference prevents their contacting anyone for help, and that the frigid night-time temperatures of the planet will force them to rapidly exhaust the ship's energy reserves on heat.

The captain then posits a new theory about what is going on: The planet is inhabited by telepathic aliens who are using illusions to keep them from reporting back to Earth, thus averting colonization of their home.

The successive disproving of Ross's theories, combined with an intuitive knowledge of their condition, brings Mason and Carter to the realization that they already crashed and are dead.

In compliance with Ross's order, the men are returned to the moment where Mason first spotted the E-89's wreckage, doomed to relive the past several hours of investigation over and over.

Picture of a latter-day Flying Dutchman, sailing into the Twilight Zone.The model of the hovering spaceship is that of a C-57D Cruiser, a leftover prop from MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

[2][3] A crew member shirt, also used in the episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home", was offered at auction in late September 2015 by Profiles in History with an estimated value of $1,000 to $1,500, with a winning bid of $1,600 by Mathew G. Perrone, a private collector.